Chatham House (2015). Opportunities and Challenges for Journalism in the Digital Age. Asian and European Perspectives

Embed Size (px)

Citation preview

  • 7/25/2019 Chatham House (2015). Opportunities and Challenges for Journalism in the Digital Age. Asian and European Perspectives

    1/15

    Research PaperGareth PriceAsia Programme | August 2015

    Opportunities and Challengesfor Journalism in the Digital

    Age: Asian and EuropeanPerspectives

  • 7/25/2019 Chatham House (2015). Opportunities and Challenges for Journalism in the Digital Age. Asian and European Perspectives

    2/15

    Opportunities and Challenges for Journalism in the Digital Age: Asian and European Perspectives

    | Chatham House

    Summary

    While the death of newspapers has been long predicted, the internet and social media providethe industry with significant challenges; traditional models are rapidly being made redundant.In particular, newspapers are no longer gatekeepers of access to news.

    Although newspapers were among the first industries to recognize the internets importance,they have performed poorly at monetizing readership in the digital age. Instead, many revenuestreams have been diverted from newspapers to IT companies and news aggregators.

    Some newspapers and journalists have sought funding from foundations, or through crowd-sourcing for particular investigations, though there are clear concerns about the sustainabilityand impartiality of such models.

    Usage of social media as a source of news is increasing. However, in divided societies thedissemination of false news through social media can threaten community cohesion. Someorganizations have therefore started validating social media stories.

    Although the challenges facing the media are global, there are regional and country-specificissues. The combination of European technology and Asias growing markets suggests there ispotential for greater engagement between journalists in Europe and Asia. Already, many Asian

    newspapers run articles by European newspapers. On the other hand, the rising internationalprominence of Asian powers such as China means that European newspapers are also likely todevote more attention to Asia.

    Globalization means that the traditional method whereby a journalist gets a scoop for anindividual newspaper is likely to be replaced by institutionalized collaboration between differentnews outfits with input from citizen journalists.

  • 7/25/2019 Chatham House (2015). Opportunities and Challenges for Journalism in the Digital Age. Asian and European Perspectives

    3/15

    Opportunities and Challenges for Journalism in the Digital Age: Asian and European Perspectives

    | Chatham House2

    IntroductionThis paper explores the challenges facing the newspaper industry in Asia and Europe, and is basedon the 7th ASEF Editors Roundtable1organized by the Asia-Europe Foundation (ASEF) andKonrad Adenauer Stiftung (KAS), and held in conjunction with the 10th Asia-Europe Meeting(ASEM10)2Summit in Milan, Italy, in October 2014.

    The news industry faces unprecedented uncertainty and upheaval. The rise of the internet alongside developments in news aggregation, online search and social media has transformedhow news is produced, distributed and accessed. It has had a profound impact on the economics ofthe industry. Advertising revenue for European newspapers has declined dramatically in recent

    years, and in Asia a similar downturn seems likely soon.

    The death of newspapers has long been predicted. Although consumption of news from televisionhad affected sales prior to the internet, the advent of digital media has taken this trend to newdimensions. In 2012 the Center for the Digital Future at the USC Annenberg School forCommunication and Journalism predicted that within five years only the largest and smallestnewspapers would survive. Later that year, Rupert Murdoch predicted that there might be no morenewspapers within a decade. Such gloomy prophecies have been common for years, but there aresimply too many factors involved to make any credible predictions. Moreover, for all the industrysmuch-publicized challenges, newspapers remain a pillar of global news consumption. Every day, 2.5billion newspapers are read in print and 800 million digitally.3

    Still, there is no doubt that the rise of social media and the ubiquity of online news and opinionpose an existential challenge to the traditional newspaper model in which professional journalistsact as guardians and privileged distributors of (scarce) information. The pace and reach of non-organized digital coverage of major news over the past decade or so such as the 2004 IndianOcean tsunami, the Hudson River plane crash in January 2009 and the raid on Osama bin Ladenscompound in Abbottabad, Pakistan in 2011 demonstrate the growing power of social media. Inthe digital age, members of the public act as eyewitnesses, publishers, authors and, increasingly, thebreakers of news stories.

    This shift is challenging accepted journalistic notions of factual reporting, accuracy and balance.The so-called news provided by social media may not present the full picture. It may give a partial,partisan or deliberately distorted view of an event. The insistence on the factual who, what,when, where and why of any story which traditionally underpinned reported journalism isbeing eroded. The irony of the situation is that the proliferation of free news demonstrates thecontinued need for journalists of integrity, but also threatens the very revenue streams needed tosupport their work.

    1The ASEF Editors Roundtable is a knowledge-exchange and networking biennial media event held i n conjunction with the ASEM Summit,http://www.asef.org/projects/programmes/513-asia-europe-editors-roundtable.2The Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM) is an intergovernmental forum for dialogue and cooperation which fosters political dialogue, reinforceseconomic cooperation and promotes cooperation in other areas. http://www.aseminfoboard.org.3WAN-IFRA, World Press Trends 2014, http://www.wan-ifra.org/reports/2014/10/07/world-press-trends-report-2014.

  • 7/25/2019 Chatham House (2015). Opportunities and Challenges for Journalism in the Digital Age. Asian and European Perspectives

    4/15

    Opportunities and Challenges for Journalism in the Digital Age: Asian and European Perspectives

    | Chatham House3

    The challenges facing newspapers

    Todays news providers operate in one of the most volatile environments any industry has faced in100 years. While newspaper circulation in some countries in Europe has been in decline since the1950s, as consumers have increasingly relied on television, rising advertising revenue longcompensated for this and allowed print news media to continue to flourish. Between 1950 and 2000advertising revenues in Europe grew by 300 per cent in real terms. However, the rise of the internetand digital/social media in the past 15 years has changed the picture: since 2000 newspaperadvertising sales in Europe have fallen across the board.

    The decline in advertising revenue has lagged the decline in circulation, but since 2000 advertising

    revenues in Europe have also slumped as advertisers themselves have shifted to new media andpersonalized marketing; the latter now accounts for 75 per cent of advertising spend. Whileadvertising revenue remains important in Asia, here too it is likely to plateau as internetconnectivity increases and advertisers follow trends in Europe and the United States. In Thailandand other Asian countries, vernacular language has given some protection to local newsorganizations, but the trend seems inevitable. While the long-predicted demise of newspapers hasnot yet occurred in Asia, no one could state with confidence what the news media landscape in theregion will look like in 20 years.

    The rise of new media has given advertisers the chance to personalize their messages and targetspecific audiences. But the challenge for news media is not simply one of revenue. It is that news

    organizations relevance as gatekeepers of access to information is under threat. Whereas the mediaused to decide what was newsworthy, social media now enables consumers to define what counts asnews and to distribute information and photos of events in their daily lives. Major newsorganizations such as the BBC in the United Kingdom and NHK in Japan actively encourage this.

    Social media is also disrupting the news industry by allowing consumers to disaggregate theirpreferences. Newspapers have long acted as aggregators, combining general news with coverage ofsports, business, entertainment and so forth. Now, the aggregating role is increasingly being takenover by services such as Yahoo and Google. The news-related profits of Google, Facebook and so oncould compensate for declining revenues in newspapers. But if the future is in aggregated data,where will the content come from? Investigative journalism, in particular, would appear to face achallenging future.

    While many newspapers were among the first to see the potential of the internet, few have beentruly innovative in their reaction to the latters triumph. While many newspapers are reaching morereaders than ever before online, they have struggled to monetize these audiences. Instead,innovation has generally been driven by technology companies, both large and small. For newsorganizations, if 15 per cent of revenue comes from digital products, they are performing well; fewreceive as much as 20 per cent of their revenue from digital. It seems clear that revenues fromsubscriptions and advertising, along with current print revenues, will not approach that from printrevenues pre-2000. Given the fact that news organizations are competing for advertising with an

    ever-increasing number of digital news and information providers, this should not come as asurprise.

  • 7/25/2019 Chatham House (2015). Opportunities and Challenges for Journalism in the Digital Age. Asian and European Perspectives

    5/15

    Opportunities and Challenges for Journalism in the Digital Age: Asian and European Perspectives

    | Chatham House4

    Thus, the present revenue stream for news does not work, at least not for print outlets trying tomaintain existing business models. Pre-internet, journalists would find and write the news;newspapers would aggregate this and earn income from circulation and advertising. Now, much ofthe digital revenue in the news sector appears to have shifted to online portals, which aggregatecontent from traditional newspapers and journalists for free.

    Is todays news environment really that different?

    For all the change that the internet has brought to journalism, in some ways todays challenges aresimply a reiteration of a familiar theme: consumers are reluctant to pay for news alone. Newspapers

    have traditionally dealt with this by supplementing news with sports coverage, gossip columns andso forth in effect, subsidizing the provision of news with other offerings.

    None the less, there remains demand for real news. In this respect, digital news consumption is notdissimilar from earlier consumption patterns. In the past, consumers interested in sport turned firstto the back pages of their newspaper but they still received (and perhaps read) the whole paper.Now, they access their preferred sections online. Internet media providers, like newspapers, stillprovide access to news. And the consumers still choose as with a newspaper to read or watchwhat they like. But given the nature of the internet, the sports fan with little interest in currentaffairs can now more easily bypass news entirely. Previously, when a reader opened a newspaper, heor she knew roughly how long it would take to read. There was a beginning and an end. Now, the

    internet is infinite. A reader can stay online for minutes or hours. The amount of potentiallyaccessible information is unlimited.

    There are potentially far-reaching implications for the medias role in critically challengingestablishment positions and holding the powerful to account. For example, while newspapers stillaggregate a range of content of varying political orientations, the internets ability to target news toindividuals political views (and biases) risks creating an echo chamber wherein consumers accessonly the material that reinforces their existing beliefs and worldviews. Given the many sources ofpolitical tension and instability in Asia, this development could entrench conflicting positions andimpede resolution of difficult issues for example, if Indians generally read pro-Indianinterpretations of South Asian events (and have their views validated by friends who are reading the

    same material), while Pakistanis read pro-Pakistan interpretations (similarly validated), then thepossibility for mutual understanding or compromise over the many thorny bilateral issues in theIndiaPakistan relationship could be diminished. The risk is all the greater because of the difficulty,in the digital environment, of distinguishing between news and opinion or judging the reliability ofinformation.

    But is this situation so different from that of traditional print newspapers? Right-wing readers whoread right-wing newspapers find their positions validated. Equally, left-wing readers rarely changetheir opinions after reading right-wing newspapers; instead, they too find their opinions confirmed.

  • 7/25/2019 Chatham House (2015). Opportunities and Challenges for Journalism in the Digital Age. Asian and European Perspectives

    6/15

    Opportunities and Challenges for Journalism in the Digital Age: Asian and European Perspectives

    | Chatham House

    When everyone is an eyewitness, what is a journalist?

    The declining trend in newspaper circulation seems set to continue. The associated, though lagging,decline in advertising revenue is already taking place in Europe. Advertising revenues for Frenchnewspapers fell by around 35 per cent between 2008 and 2014; advertising revenues in the UnitedKingdom roughly halved in the same period. While newspapers are growing in emerging Asianmarkets such as India and China, and circulation rates remain high in Japan, over the next decadeadvertising revenue in Asia (particularly in more developed markets) seems set to fall. Similarly,subscriptions to television services are likely to fall as consumers access programming differently.

    Newspapers were among the first sectors to realize the potential of digital media. Most now have an

    online presence. The most commercially successful embraced a portfolio strategy of distributingcontent on a wide variety of platforms and offering subscribers bundled packages. However, manynewspapers would benefit from better engaging with or adopting ideas and business models fromtechnology companies; technology companies have been far better at seizing control of content anddigital distribution channels and creating attractive formats.

    Newspapers need to become more innovative. They are trying many approaches, but while anumber of possible pathways present themselves, it is unclear which will succeed. As far as theworkflow of newsrooms is concerned, many newspapers have adopted digital first strategies, whichinvolve concentrating on digital rather than print output. The main target has been to remain ontop of rapidly breaking news on social media networks and to maximize viewer footfall, even

    though most revenue still comes from print.

    While there is widespread agreement that the digital first approach presents the best modelcurrently available, it is unclear whether it is universally applicable, or indeed sustainable. Pioneerssuch as Schibsted, a Scandinavian publisher, may generate more than half its revenue from digital,but for most news media organizations 510 per cent is a more common figure.

    Thus, while charging for content is vital to news media, users are hesitant to pay for it. Convertinginternet traffic into cash is the challenge. Potentially, if print sales continue to decline, manytraditional newspapers will either consolidate or close. In the longer term, those that survive mayeventually find that they have greater access to sources of revenue.

    Consumers access news on digital platforms differently in different countries. For instance, in theUnited Kingdom and Spain, news is primarily accessed through known brands the GuardianorTelegraph,EL MUNDOorEL PAS. In Germany, Italy and Japan, in contrast, search engines arenow the primary sources of news. The general trend is a shift in preference towards briefer newsarticles and the use of phone-based technology (such as KakaoTalk in South Korea or Sina Weibo inChina). However, there are exceptions. In Denmark, for instance, news organizations are findingdemand for longer, in-depth discussions. And in Thailand, South Korea and Indonesia, sometraditional print media are moving into television in an attempt to diversify revenue streams.Moreover, everywhere there are examples of media organizations shifting into other related

    businesses video, television, internet and so forth. The classical boundaries of the sector havevanished.

  • 7/25/2019 Chatham House (2015). Opportunities and Challenges for Journalism in the Digital Age. Asian and European Perspectives

    7/15

    Opportunities and Challenges for Journalism in the Digital Age: Asian and European Perspectives

    | Chatham House6

    These trends reflect cultural differences, the composition of the media and the relative strength oftraditional brands in different countries. Consequently, solutions are likely to be country-specific.For newspapers, countries in which search engines are the primary source of news present aparticular challenge. Instead of searching for news horizontally (by brand), consumers aresearching by topic and reading stories from a range of providers.

    In the longer view, the period from 1950 to 2000, when newspapers boomed on the back of bothsales and advertising revenue, may come to be seen as something of a blip. In the 19th century,journalists ran printing shops, travel agencies and bookshops to subsidize news-gathering. Now, asin the past, newspapers will need to rely on a much broader range of revenue streams. Non-advertising digital revenues from promotions, services and transactions are important and growing

    faster than advertising (where advertising revenues are still growing). Newspapers may need to sellfinancial services, sell memberships to lifestyle websites or clubs, or seek grants from foundationsor through crowdfunding to finance investigations.

    The future is digital. Consequently, news organizations will need to manage tensions betweentraditional journalism and new approaches, emphasizing speed of output. Clearly newspapers needto adapt their digital products. Definitions of what even constitutes content are changing. In thepast, content used to refer to news, but now includes advertising, marketing material, games oralmost anything seen as appealing to the consumer. News media companies could focus on theircore strengths, reflecting the uniqueness of their product and becoming the reference source ongiven topics. Yet evidence suggests that increasing news offerings alone may not generate sufficient

    revenue for long-term success.

    The internet requires new approaches to advertising revenues. With the internet, adverts can bedirectly connected to content (although, of course, print newspapers have also long linkedadvertising to content whether cars, property or travel). While boosting website traffic iscommercially important, acquiring larger numbers of targeted consumers as site users/subscribersmay become a priority. The changes in media consumption patterns among younger people mayalso require a change of approach: instead of waiting for people to demand news, news may need tobe delivered to them.

    Technology provides new opportunities: local newspapers have long relied on advertising revenue

    from local companies. Awareness of geographic location provides opportunities for newsorganizations to target advertising even from very small companies. But to fully benefit fromdigitalization, news organizations will have to use technology more effectively. Otherwise, as hasbeen the case with news aggregation, they will be crowded out by tech-first companies.

    New approaches for journalism

    Who pays for journalism, if revenue streams are being eroded? What seems clear is that combinedrevenues from print and digital media (whether from website subscriptions, advertising revenue orapps) will be lower than in the pre-internet era. New models are emerging, such as crowdsourcing,

    free distribution licences, and foundation-funded journalism. While some of these ideas will work,others are likely to fail.

  • 7/25/2019 Chatham House (2015). Opportunities and Challenges for Journalism in the Digital Age. Asian and European Perspectives

    8/15

    Opportunities and Challenges for Journalism in the Digital Age: Asian and European Perspectives

    | Chatham House

    Social media provides new ways to crowdsource reporting although journalism in some sense hasalways crowdsourced to the extent that it has involved seeking witnesses to confirm details ofevents. The online era simply requires new practices, particularly when sources are not first-hand.Citizen journalism played an important role in the Arab Spring, for example, but the credibility ofstories was often uncertain given that sources lacked professional accreditation and may haveserved partisan agendas.

    Contextualizing an event can be difficult if a citizen journalist is not impartial. For instance, manyof the news stories circulating about Islamic State of Iraq and Syria are being aggregated inLebanon, but are frequently compiled by Kurds. Similarly, stories from Iran are frequentlycompiled by Iranians in exile. In the Asian context, many stories about North Korea come from

    South Korean sources. Assessing the veracity of such stories remains difficult.

    A further issue concerns the exchange and aggregation of news in the digital world. This ischallenging established copyright regimes. It is becoming the norm for online publishers to partlyor fully use content from other news sites, and to link to external sites. National copyright laws maynot be effective in respect of the internet, because of varying levels of protection for news and thedifficulty of enforcing copyrights internationally. Existing licensing and syndication processes areoften unable to compete with digital channels of distribution and redistribution of information.

    One emerging alternative is Creative Commons licensing, in which conditions for attribution andderivative uses are predetermined by the content creators and made available as machine-readable

    tags attached to content. This model is designed to speed up the licencing process, as it provides forusage of content without the need for additional licences.

    Some commercial companies and not-for-profit journalistic outlets already use these models; AlJazeera was one of the first major news organizations to use Creative Commons. Another exampleis GroundReport.com, a citizen journalism site that publishes stories itself and through syndicationagreements with other news aggregators. Its reporters receive 50 per cent of the advertising revenueassociated with the unique traffic to their posts.

    To the extent that traditional media are becoming comfortable with sponsorship, the use offoundation-funded journalism is also increasing, particularly for specific issues such as healthcare

    or the environment. However, this presents some challenges. The first is that foundations are notalways neutral and may seek to define or influence coverage of funded stories. The second challengeis that foundations priorities may change, raising the question of sustainability. Third,organizations that adopt the foundation-funded model can face significant governance challenges.They may struggle to grow, and their failure rate is significant.

    The use of community fundraising in journalism is rarer. One example is Spot.us, which from 2011to 2015 allowed members of the public to pay independently for on-demand reporting on a specificstory. In the event that a media outlet purchased publishing rights for such work once it had beenproduced, money was repaid to those who had initially commissioned the reporting. Allunpurchased content was made available via Creative Commons.

  • 7/25/2019 Chatham House (2015). Opportunities and Challenges for Journalism in the Digital Age. Asian and European Perspectives

    9/15

    Opportunities and Challenges for Journalism in the Digital Age: Asian and European Perspectives

    | Chatham House8

    Social media: a role for verification

    Social media is also redefining the journalistic landscape through the creation of virtualcommunities. Organizations such as Plus Social Good use social media to share knowledge andunite communities. Traditional news organizations cannot continue treating publishing on socialmedia as a subordinate activity to their core reporting. Instead, they need to integrate newscoverage into their social media to enhance its impact. In this way, newspapers become more likemeeting places instead of top-down distributors of information. Furthermore, many people nowconsider trends on social media to be as much genuine news as external events this means thatthe very definition of what constitutes news is changing. News organizations may need to draw inyounger audiences through viral videos, or take advantage of the eagerness of advertisers and

    brands to capitalize on social media.

    As with citizen journalism, however, one of the problems with social media is that stories are oftennot verified. After recent flooding in China, newspapers used photographs from social media whichturned out to have been taken a decade earlier. Instances of newspapers or news agencies relying onsocial media sources that subsequently prove to be false are growing in number.

    Social media is also susceptible to deliberate manipulation by partisan interests. In several recentconflicts, such as in Ukraine, examples of social media providing reliable citizen journalism havebeen limited. Instead, information published on such forums has frequently turned out to be false.In the absence of journalists to debunk rumours or challenge propaganda, social media can

    destabilize political situations by contributing to misinformation and scaremongering. Moregenerally, countries in which information or misinformation is tightly controlled by thegovernment demonstrate the limits of social media as an alternative to journalism.

    That said, social media can be an important democratizing influence and a force against censorship.For example, it played a significant role in disseminating information about recent anti-governmentprotests in Hong Kong. However, the successful dissemination of information through social mediain this context was made possible, among other factors, by journalists ability to verify andcorroborate information. This demonstrates that there remains a role for journalistic skills inchecking information, validating stories and preventing citizen journalism from getting out ofcontrol.

    Future journalists will need to accept that they cannot always break stories in the traditional sense.This goes against the scoop mentality, and the proprietorial attitude towards news that has oftenaccompanied it in the past. Nowadays, news will often appear first on social media. To an extent,this changes the role of formal journalism, which will increasingly be to check, package andcontextualize such information.

    Another important potential role for journalism in the digital age will be to filter useful news fromthe vast array of online information. Every minute, 100 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube.Storyful, based in Ireland, has established a successful business model that works to verify (or

    debunk) social media stories. The company mines Twitter, YouTube and similar sites, building listsof stories by topic or theme; it looks for stories emanating from a particular location, traces theorigin of the stories, and, if they are confirmed as genuine, acquires the rights to provide content to

  • 7/25/2019 Chatham House (2015). Opportunities and Challenges for Journalism in the Digital Age. Asian and European Perspectives

    10/15

    Opportunities and Challenges for Journalism in the Digital Age: Asian and European Perspectives

    | Chatham House9

    newsrooms and brands. The model recognizes that each event creates a virtual community, broughttogether through shared hashtags. In this context the role for journalists is to turn these isolatedunits of social content into compelling stories.

    The scope for collaboration

    The digital revolution is forcing some media organizations to reassess their relationships withcompetitors. An increasing number of companies have started to cooperate on non-content issues,such as sharing studios or film crews. Cooperation on content is also increasing. Newspapers inAsia frequently run stories from European newspapers although the reverse is less common

    (often because European newspapers are unaware of the availability of material in their language;or because, lacking knowledge of the region and experience with Asian news outlets, they areuncertain about materials credibility).

    Within Asia, an example of cooperation can be found in the form of the Asia News Network.Established in 1999, it comprises 21 media groups from across the region and is intended to providean avenue for cooperation to optimize news coverage.4The organization allows members to publishnews stories from other network members. In return, each member commits to contributing at leastfive stories daily. Newspapers that use stories from other members give credit to the originalpublisher. They also commit to helping members of the network, for instance through sharingfacilities. This enables them to share research resources, cut costs and increase the volume of

    content they publish.

    Other initiatives are more overtly political.Aman ki Asha(Destination Peace) is a peacebuildinginitiative between the Jang Group (from Pakistan) and the Times of India. While the movement hasstruggled to influence the policies of the Pakistani and Indian governments, it has improved thevisibility of elements in both countries striving to improve the bilateral relationship.

    Despite gloomy predictions, newspapers are far from dead. While the digital age poses a variety ofserious challenges to the forms and finances of journalistic reporting, there is much potential forenhanced collaboration between Asian and European media organizations. European organizationshave technology but need growth, while Asia has markets 800 million internet users in China

    alone but lacks technology. The fastest-growing market for news in Asia is likely to be in mobilephones. Furthermore, while European publics may lack awareness of Asian issues, the growingeconomic power of Asian countries suggests that European demand for coverage of Asia is likely toincrease. In the future, stories in particular truly international stories will be broken throughformal or informal collaborations.

    4See Asia News Network, http://www.asianewsnet.net/about-ann.html.

  • 7/25/2019 Chatham House (2015). Opportunities and Challenges for Journalism in the Digital Age. Asian and European Perspectives

    11/15

    Opportunities and Challenges for Journalism in the Digital Age: Asian and European Perspectives

    | Chatham House10

    About the author

    Gareth Price is a senior research fellow at Chatham House leading research on South Asia. He waspreviously an analyst at the Economist Intelligence Unit, focusing on India, Pakistan andAfghanistan; and before that the South Asia analyst at Control Risks Group. His current researchinterests include Indias foreign policy, regional relations within South Asia and the politics ofwater. He has advised a range of governments and corporates on strategies of engagement withSouth Asia.

  • 7/25/2019 Chatham House (2015). Opportunities and Challenges for Journalism in the Digital Age. Asian and European Perspectives

    12/15

    Opportunities and Challenges for Journalism in the Digital Age: Asian and European Perspectives

    | Chatham House11

    Roundtable participants

    Ms Velislava POPOVA, Editor-in-Chief,Dnevnik, BulgariaMr YU Yilei, Editor-in-Chief, China Daily(online), ChinaMr Flemming YTZEN, Editor,Politiken Weekly, DenmarkMr Didier LAURAS, Chief Editor, AFP, FranceMs Ina TENZ, Programme Director, Radio FFN, GermanyMr Jaideep BOSE, Editor-in-Chief, Times of India, IndiaMrs Rosarita Niken WIDIASTUTI, President Director, Radio Republik Indonesia, RRI, IndonesiaMr Stephen RAE, Editor-in-Chief, Independent News & Media, IrelandMs Enrica TONINELLI, Deputy Director, Rai News 24, ItalyMr Yoichi KOSUKEGAWA, Deputy Managing Director, International Department,Kyodo News,

    JapanMr YU Kun-ha, Editor-in-Chief, The Korea Herald, KoreaMr Stefan OSORIO-KNIG, journalist, Tageblatt, LuxembourgMr Cees VAN DER LAAN, Editor-in-Chief, Trouw, NetherlandsMs Maria A. RESSA, Chief Executive Officer and Executive Editor, Rappler Inc., PhilippinesMr Antnio SAMPAIO, Madrid Bureau Chief,Lusa, PortugalMr Nabi ABDULLAEV, Editor-in-Chief, The Moscow Times, RussiaMr Alan JOHN, Deputy Editor, The Straits Times, SingaporeMr Pana JANVIROJ, President, The Nation, Thailand

    Speakers:Dr Fernando SAMANIEGO, CEO, International New Media Consulting

    Ms CHEN Fang, Editor-in-Chief, News Center, Phoenix New MediaMs ine KERR, Managing Editor, StoryfulProf Robert G. PICARD, Director of Research, Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism

    Moderator:Mr Gilles DEMPTOS, Director, Asia, WAN-IFRA

    Rapporteur:Dr Gareth PRICE, Senior Research Fellow, Asia Programme, Chatham House

  • 7/25/2019 Chatham House (2015). Opportunities and Challenges for Journalism in the Digital Age. Asian and European Perspectives

    13/15

    Opportunities and Challenges for Journalism in the Digital Age: Asian and European Perspectives

    | Chatham House12

    About the 7th ASEF Editors Roundtable

    The ASEF Editors Roundtable is one of the oldest programmes of the Asia-Europe Foundation(ASEF), which was first launched in 1997 in Luxembourg. The roundtable is ASEFs top mediaprogramme, gathering senior editors of major print or broadcast media to exchange perspectives oncurrent affairs pertinent to Asia and Europe. The event is often organized on the sidelines of ASEMsummits. Its agenda focuses on salient issues which may also be discussed under the summitagenda. For more information, please visitwww.asef.org.

    The 7th ASEF Editors Roundtable, Asian and European Media in the Digital Age, gatherededitors-in-chief from ASEM countries to share how their agencies are experiencing the changing

    face of the media, as well as adapting to it. In addition to providing a learning opportunity, thisroundtable sought to identify possible improved linkages between Asian and European media toconquer new territories and reach out to more audiences in this open and, at the same time,increasingly closely knit digital world.

    The roundtable on which this paper is based took place on 1517 October 2014 in Milan, Italy, onthe sidelines of the 10th Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM) Summit.

    Previous roundtable editions:

    6th Asia-Europe Editors Roundtable

    Multiple currencies for a multi-polar world13 October 2012, Bangkok, Thailand

    5th Asia-Europe Editors Roundtable

    Asia and Europe: engaging for a post-crisis world3 October 2010, Brussels, Belgium

    4th Asia-Europe Editors Roundtable

    Session 1: Globalized media: The unification/fragmentation paradoxSession 2: The medias role in promoting environmental awareness: A global role for the media23 October 2008, Beijing, China

    3rd Asia-Europe Editors Roundtable

    Session 1: Dialogue among cultures, and civilizations need for socially responsible journalismSession 2: Shared responsibility in sustainable development and resource management9 September 2006, Helsinki, Finland

    2nd ASEF Editors Roundtable

    Session 1: The medias impact on public opinion and foreign policySession 2: The medias role in shaping attitudes in Asia and Europe18 October 2000, Seoul, Korea

    1st ASEF Meeting of Editors

    Building bridges with images26 October 1997, Luxembourg

    http://www.asef.org/http://www.asef.org/
  • 7/25/2019 Chatham House (2015). Opportunities and Challenges for Journalism in the Digital Age. Asian and European Perspectives

    14/15

    Opportunities and Challenges for Journalism in the Digital Age: Asian and European Perspectives

    | Chatham House13

    About the Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM)

    The Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM) is an intergovernmental forum for dialogue and cooperationestablished in 1996 to deepen relations between Asia and Europe. It addresses political, economicand socio-cultural issues of common concern.

    ASEM brings together 53 members (21 Asian and 30 European countries, the ASEAN Secretariat,and the European Union).

    The ASEM Summit is a biennial meeting between the heads of state and government, the presidentof the European Council, the president of the European Commission and the secretary-general of

    the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).

    For more information, please visitwww.aseminfoboard.org.

    http://www.aseminfoboard.org/http://www.aseminfoboard.org/
  • 7/25/2019 Chatham House (2015). Opportunities and Challenges for Journalism in the Digital Age. Asian and European Perspectives

    15/15

    Independent thinking since 1920

    Chatham House, the Royal Institute of International Affairs, is an independent policy institutebased in London. Our mission is to help build a sustainably secure, prosperous and just world.

    Chatham House is an independent body that promotes the rigorous study of internationalquestions and does not express opinions of its own. The opinions expressed in this publicationare the responsibility of the author(s).

    The Royal Institute of International Affairs, 2015

    ISBN 978 1 78413 086 2

    All Chatham House publications are printed on recycled paper.

    The Royal Institute of International AffairsChatham House10 St Jamess Square, London SW1Y 4LET +44 (0)20 7957 5700 F +44 (0)20 7957 [email protected] www.chathamhouse.org